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The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

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Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#271

Post by ColdStream »

iamnothere wrote: post #229
shnock wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please link those warnings? I’m interested in institutional forecasts of such challenges in the upcoming decades.

I recommend the Energy Skeptic blog, they often provide sources and links to papers: https://energyskeptic.com/ They also pass my personal test of not advocating for dumb feel-good ideas. Recently they published a well-sourced article on why the US rail system isn’t a good candidate for electrification.

Another great one, at least the earlier stuff was 'Do the Math' by Tom Murphy.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/

Was all about just doing the math on energy transitions. He wasn't anti renewable technology but did want to point out how scale is a problem that few understand.

My favorite number of his is, that at 3% growth year over year, we would need all the energy of the Milky way galaxy by the year 13,000. As the galaxy is 100,000 light years across, this would defy physics itself.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#272

Post by dyauspitr »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #231

Is anyone that cares going to put on a suit and talk to the people passing laws?

What you don’t realize is most people want this. The social media bans across Western Europe, and Australia are heavily supported by the vast majority of the population.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#273

Post by awakeasleep »

hliyan wrote: post #262

There's a better network layer solution than trying to block visitors at every host or at the endpoint devices' OS/application layer. I know because a company in my country is already testing such a thing in private beta. A router firmware that provides two wifi endpoints per home, one for adults and one for minors. You only share the minors' password with your children. The firmware maintains a whitelist of sites (i…

That sounds like a great solution for when your child is in your house using your wifi.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#275

Post by dyauspitr »

6r17 wrote: post #164
cuoder wrote: post #156

UK government (and the rest of Europe) has had a very easy time implementing strict administrative regulations due to public acceptance. And the children argument is like the easiest angle to attack, you can use it for almost any cause and win.

[flagged]

I actually think sustained adherence to the goal of deanonymizing the Internet to basically get kids off of it in the face of significant minority opposition, actually portrays strength. I care deeply about privacy and surveillance in the real world, but who cares about the Internet, it’s an optional virtual space. For anything that’s not optional like banking, commerce etc. I’m completely OK with being not anonymous because that’s the status quo.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#276

Post by zmmmmm »

chr15m wrote: post #254

The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is the level at which to solve it. Give families tools and information to do so.

the weird thing about it all is that age is a bad proxy in the first place for a child's level of safety in interacting with online content. Some kids are super mature at 11 and others still need protection at 16. For some reason the world has fixated on "years alive" as a perfect measure of vulnerability and now are doggedly pursuing it.

Even if perfect age verification is implemented, kids will be harmed. Because they are vulnerable while above the arbitrary age limit. So -arguing for age verification is harming children. Won't somebody think of the children?

And the answer comes back to the same point. Parents should mediate this. Online content should advertise its maturity level, and parents should be able to configure devices at setup time for the maturity level they are appropriate for. Then apps should respect that and everyone can be better off without robbing everybody of anonymity or freedom.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#277

Post by ColdStream »

chr15m wrote: post #254

The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is the level at which to solve it. Give families tools and information to do so.

This is something where I agree and disagree with both sides.

Parents should have the tools to protect their children, the providers should have those tools in place. But those that are dealing the goods as also heavily invested in trying to maximize engagement and so they do not really work to hard on providing those tools.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#278

Post by StanislavPetrov »

I can't be the only one who will never comply with these draconian, anti-privacy laws, nor the only one with the technical prowess to bypass them. Never used social media (unless you count HN as social media, which is a stretch), so perhaps it won't be as great a loss as it will be to many. I have no doubt there are many like-minded people (in number if not in population %) that feel the same, and will undoubtedly repopulate newsgroups and message boards that are not subject to this authoritarian nonsense.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#279

Post by autoexec »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #241
autoexec wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Incentives aren't the whole cause of behavior and they aren't the solution to changing it either. That's the same simplistic and flawed mentality that pushes for harsher punishments to deter crime when the evidence shows that doesn't work and that not even death penalty is an effective deterrent. People have several incentives to lose weight, but increasingly they still overeat. Incentives play a rol…

I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. You're confusing desire/intention with incentive. Someone may have a desire or intention to lose weight. But unless they lose the weight they lack incentive. It's simple: incentives incite action. Don't make it more complicated to win an argument.

> Someone may have a desire or intention to lose weight. But unless they lose the weight they lack incentive.

Here are just some of the incentives overweight people have to lose weight:

They'll look better, to themselves and others. They'll have more clothing options. They'll feel better. They'll be healthier. They'll have drastically lower odds of many future heath problems. They'll live longer which means they can spend more time being with their loved ones.

Those are all incentives. Everyone who is obese has those incentives, even though different individuals may assign different values to them. Even with all those incentives that hasn't stopped the obesity problem. incentives don't incite action, but they can encourage them.

incentive noun [ C or U ] Something that encourages a person to do something by offering them a reward (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/incentiv...)

You can have a ton of encouragement, but that doesn't mean it will be enough to incite a behavior. What definition of incentive are you using?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#280

Post by iamnothere »

ColdStream wrote: post #271
iamnothere wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend the Energy Skeptic blog, they often provide sources and links to papers: https://energyskeptic.com/ They also pass my personal test of not advocating for dumb feel-good ideas. Recently they published a well-sourced article on why the US rail system isn’t a good candidate for electrification.

Another great one, at least the earlier stuff was 'Do the Math' by Tom Murphy. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/ Was all about just doing the math on energy transitions. He wasn't anti renewable technology but did want to point out how scale is a problem that few understand. My favorite number of his is, that at 3% growth year over year, we would need all the energy of the Milky way galaxy by the year 13,000. As the galaxy…

Seconded, that’s a good one too. I also recommend Jem Bendell as a palate cleanser, his work is fluffier but it’s all about finding ways to thrive during decline rather than succumbing to doom and gloom.
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